* Posts by Wellyboot

2251 publicly visible posts • joined 24 Apr 2018

World-plus-dog booted out of Facebook, Instagram, Threads

Wellyboot Silver badge
Happy

Think of all those coffee cup photos going without likes, the lack of positive affirmation will be an existential crisis for meeellions!

or not.

Juno fly-by detects lower levels of oxygen on Europa than expected

Wellyboot Silver badge

If there was a significant atmosphere to retain the Oxygen then the lack thereof would indicate a low chance of life even on an ice covered world, on Europa almost any gas rising from the ice will be stripped by the prevailing conditions and as this was a fly-by there are a whole host of possible reasons that can’t be ruled out either.

Once satellites are placed into orbit around the Jovian moons we’ll quickly gain the information needed for accurate detailed analysis.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: But when life got going on earth ...

Early life on Earth did produce O2 as a waste product, so until we actually find ET life and the associated bio-markers to look for we’re just going with the known. Free O2 over Europa can’t prove much beyond the level of O2 above the surface*, this in no way identifies the amount of dissolved O2 in the oceans under the ice in a way that can impact the odds of finding life there to any degree.

*For Europa that’s a really nasty environment to try and exist in, I wouldn’t call it an atmosphere.

German defense chat overheard by Russian eavesdroppers on Cisco's WebEx

Wellyboot Silver badge
Devil

Re: Mistake?

I have a sneaking belief that the NATO plan to reinforce Poland in any future war would seem very familiar to anyone who has seen previous work by Erich von Manstein!

US military pulls the trigger, uses AI to target air strikes

Wellyboot Silver badge

Targeting system have the accuracy to allow non explosive weapons, a few hundred kilos of cement filled bomb case or bladed hellfire missile can destroy a single vehicle and barely scratch the next car along. It'd be nice to think they also try to have the ballistic path such that a guidance failure won't result in any photogenic screw ups.

Of course this has no benefit for any misidentified targets.

'How do I reset my router' isn't in LLM corpuses. An alliance of telcos wants to change that

Wellyboot Silver badge

I find it hard to believe they've ever generated customer service records.

Underwater cables in Red Sea damaged months after Houthis 'threatened' to do just that

Wellyboot Silver badge

>further reduces the resilience of the grid from an already perilous point, it's crazy<

There is no resilience, for a long while now we've occasionally* had enough UK online generation to be self sufficient during winter months.

It's not just crazy, it's criminally incompetent to have allowed the situation to develop never mind let it persist.

*When wind speeds across the UK are in the sweet spot.

China breakthrough promises optical discs that store hundreds of terabytes

Wellyboot Silver badge

New use for laser spectroscopy!

This has a vast potential if enough r/w heads can be squeezed into a small box.

Even with the prototype specs it'll eventually be big improvement in near line storage capacity.

Boeing-backed air taxi upstart Wisk plans to fly you across town at UberX prices by 2030

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Coat

Re: I don't wish to be picky, but...

at that height you can't even join the mile high club!

LockBit ransomware gang disrupted by global operation

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Re: Well done, lads!

Removing lowlife from the freedom to stand up a replacement will merit a bonus.

Vietnam to collect biometrics - even DNA - for new ID cards

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QR codes - leading to a 301 redirect, what more could MITM software ask for !

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Coming to a govt building near you

Indeed, the ability to positively identify lost small children is about the only safe use for this technology.

Within a few years biometrics in general will only be of use to identify the body right in front of you (especially when some reassembly is required) because deep fakes will have improved until they match sensor resolution.

Space nukes: The unbelievably bad idea that's exactly that ... unbelievable

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Arguments

Borders lie where neither side wishes to pay the cost* of changing them and the brutal reality is that it’s only your land if you can defend it.

Putin has been quite willing to pay the cost in recent small wars and ignore the other world leaders mumbling 'shame on you' as he forces small neighbours to follow his wishes. In his Ukraine venture, Putins line was the Moldovan border where he already has his oppressed Russian minority simmering away. Had the Baltic states not joined NATO it would have been the Kaliningrad exclave needing to be brought back inside mother Russia.

Any flimsy excuse will do to justify the adventure.

Shipping several thousand anti-tank missiles to Ukraine just before the invasion was as the Americans would say a 'Hail Mary' move by BoJo because no one really believed that the Russian military would be so incompetent at the attempt. Long term, now Russia’s bogged down in a WW1 meat grinder (with added drone video) it’s in the self interest of everybody else to keep Ukraine fighting until Putin meets the usual end for a dictator who is seen to fail.

Politics – basically unchanged since the first ape decided ‘He’s got food, I’m having that’

*in Blood & Treasure.

Wellyboot Silver badge
Mushroom

Quantitative analysis or simple demonstration?

Place running electronics in a microwave oven and set it going.

Move away rapidly until the demonstration concludes. (there will be an audible/visual indicator)

Observe the electronics to determine result. (Extinguish any fire).

Dispose of the now scrap microwave.

Redecorate location. (rebuild if this was a particularly impressive demonstration)

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Star wars?

I'd describe a weeks notice as 'Often able to deploy one soon', with three there’d almost always be one able to sail tomorrow and we'd need four to guarantee one at sea 24/7 where it needs to be to do the job.

QE is now out of service until fixed, we were lucky with the PoW, able to sail in 7 days is akin to a pit stop for ships this size, 28 days readiness implies doing deep maintenance with many major systems pulled apart for servicing.

Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Air Canada must really be terrible

Interesting read, within months of the 2022 law change to allow assisted dying for less than a terminal diagnosis governnment officials are offering to help with suicide.

Hugo Boss uniforms on order?

Wellyboot Silver badge

And eventually when enough people are doing this regularly we might get an improvement in default customer handling methods, not holding my breath but stranger things have happened.

Out with the old, in with the new as 100 Starlink satellites take atmospheric exit

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: When the counter overflows the satellite reverses course?

Could be anything from a simple software bug to occasionally being in the Van Allen belt.

Given the 'normal' lifespan and number of these floating around I suspect that having to de-orbit less than 1% early will be a possiblility they are prepared to live with.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Disposible like BIC or Gillette razors

I remember their blades lasting a long time as well.

When they binned the old G2* the last blades I had lasted years and were "Made in West Germany", get your history books out kiddies!

*mid '90s

European Court of Human Rights declares backdoored encryption is illegal

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

If the Tories wanted to frighten the boats away all they need to do is ship all the illegals picked up to a tin sheds on one of our remote islands, no international treaty needed.

No one leaving France is a refugee, they've already bypassed a dozen perfectly safe countries getting there.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Well good thing the UK had Brexit

The freedom enjoyed by us Brits to walk our streets without ID is indeed a two edged sword!

Cybercriminals are stealing iOS users' face scans to break into mobile banking accounts

Wellyboot Silver badge
Holmes

Can I be the first to say

NSS

'Scandal-plagued' data broker tracked visits to '600 Planned Parenthood locations'

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: That's why collecting and selling location information needs to be very illegal

It's called experience, Plods first impressions will be 'mostly' correct after a year or two on the job, so it's just human nature for Plod to move from 'Innocent until proven otherwise' to guilty by association or any other circumstance that fits their thinking - because it saves time. Once that mindset has settled into place it's going to take a lot of effort to revert.

Raspberry Pi on IPO plans: 'We want to be ready when the markets are ready'

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Pi 4 vs 5

I think you're right about the user base splitting. The Pi5 is quite a step up, I've not bought one yet as I haven't thought of anything it could be needed for other than as a general purpose desktop and I've a bunch of old laptops for that.

I'm using a 8gig-Pi4 to play about with VMs with the plan to replace a couple of older models doing half a dozen background tasks (DHCP etc). and the VMs are purely because they let me try things without needing to toddle over to the cupboard they're keeping mildly warm.

BOFH: Looks like you're writing an email. Fancy telling your colleague to #$%^ off?

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Life imitating art

It follows the general BOFH plot meandering.

But Where's the devious git that is the BOFH with his carpet & lime that we all know and wish we could emulate.

Software troubles delay F-35 fighter jet deliveries ... again

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Once Upon A Time At Hawker-Siddley...............

Harrier - phenomenally loud - yes the Pegasus motor is very impressive, I've not been in a rolling mill but I used to live a few miles from one many moons ago and heard the occasional loud bang.

Loudest I’ve experienced was standing 100 metres from Starfighters as they left the tarmac in formation, I could feel my internal organs vibrating in sympathy with the ground, there were four of them in full afterburner!

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Magnificent men in flying machine

The big problem with F35 is that it was planned to replace both mainstream jets as well as niche specialist roles and supply state of the art stealth in a single type in large numbers to offset multiple sets of development costs (political meddling anyone). Unfortunately the only useful mission overlap between the older aircraft is that they drop bombs, The A10/F16/F117 fly home to nice big airfield (USAF), the F18/A6 fly home to a carrier (USN & USMC) and Harriers fly home to where the USMC have built a temporary airfield behind the front line (mud marines really like having Harrier support nearby, the A10 can also operate from roads but the USAF like their comfort).

It comes as no real surprise to many aircraft engineering types that the F35 being (mostly) superior to all older types actually needs two different sets of wings and two different fuselage designs to do this. The Navy model (F35C) has much bigger wings to allow carrier operations and the VSTOL (F35B) has a completely different fuselage (both compared to the F35A Air force version), but they are all the same from the pilot forward and share avionics.

The upshot is that the Swiss army knife of aircraft will cost far more overall & take longer to develop than the set of assorted blades it’s meant to replace.

Top Linux distros drop fresh beats

Wellyboot Silver badge

Older hardware.

>>kernel 6.5 will be the point at which a lot of still perfectly usable hardware hits the end of the road with the big names in Linux<<

To be fair it's the point where old hardware just has to be left on the 6.1 LTS* version which will be getting support for quite a long time to come.

If you're no changing your software the underlying hardware will continue to be adequate until it fails.

*32bit is supported on kernel 5.10 & kernel 4.19 from 2018 years ago are both still going in LTS

AI-driven booze bouncers can ID you with face scan

Wellyboot Silver badge

Last time I was in clucbcardland* for something the discounter across the road doesn't stock I mentally added up the no-card price hike difference for an average shop, it was about £15, that's far more than the difference between them and the discounter total cost.

*Pre xmas for flan cases, Yes I could faff about using ready roll or make it from scratch but it's not worth the time/cost saving.

Microsoft hits $3 trillion as investors drink AI Kool-Aid

Wellyboot Silver badge

So only a x20 multiple of actual profit for the year up to last september.

(gross)

White goods giant fires legal threats to unplug open source plugin

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Re: Some people...

Very complex! it could drive you to drink.

I and a quite a few others here have been watching the power generation & delivery saga for years many of us share concerns about the requirement & timescale issues. Basically, 25 years isn't very long to build out the national infrastructure to reliably provide the required clean cheap(ish) power once you get down to engineering reality and if we had the power available we wouldn't need tariffs with this level of price movement trying to level out the demand.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Some people...

I've scanned through the dashboard1 showing the last couple of years and indeed recently the average kWh price is in the 10-25p range providing a reasonable saving outside of the peak 4-8pm (26-36p) band.

However, agile pricing removes the OFGEM price cap and replaces it with this I lifted directly from Octopus website2. (there’s a lot more being explained than just this bit, quite refreshing from a supplier)

>>>

min(2.20 x W + P, 95)

In this equation,

2.20 is a coefficient that includes our distribution costs, which varies based on where you are in Britain;

W is the wholesale cost of electricity for that period in pence per kilowatt-hour (p/kWh);

P is the peak-time premium, which ranges from 11 - 14 based on where you are, and is only applied between 4pm and 7pm.

95 is chosen to ensure the price is capped at 100p/kWh once VAT is added.

In this example…

The Agile price is 2.2 times the wholesale price of energy and between 4.00pm and 7.00pm an additional 12p / kWh is included (but capped at 100p / kWh, come what may).

There’re a few common questions this often prompts:

Why is there a penalty at the peak period? Why is there a 100p cap? How well does Agile reflect renewable supply?

To understand that, we need to look at what makes up our costs.

These are surprisingly complex and made up of a range of variables...

Wholesale – the wholesale price of energy can vary heaps, ranging from low negative numbers (when generation is really high, and demand is low) to over 200 p/kWh. Before the energy crisis, it was around 5 p/kWh overnight and 9 p/kWh at peak, in the current market conditions, it is around 22 p/kWh overnight and 36 p/kWh at peak.

<<<

These rates follow seasonal trends, any summer savings will be likely be wiped out over a cold winter. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who hasn’t got the capacity to cover their needs at potentially eye watering rates 24/7.

On the other hand Octopus does have a reasonable capped tariff, I’m happy enough using it :).

1 https://agileprices.co.uk/ - For a real bum-twitcher look at April 2nd 2022 on the Agile 22-08-21 tariff when the capped unit cost was 20p

2 https://octopus.energy/blog/agile-pricing-explained/

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Some people...

>Save up to £2 per wash< - HOLY F*~* !!!!

A bowl of hot water & some fairly liquid might cost 10p

Amazon Ring sounds death knell for surveillance as a service

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Surveillance society can have its upsides too

And wil be starting at a disadvantage with plod come the future event when they aren't telling porkies

Burnout epidemic proves there's too much Rust on the gears of open source

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: "Burnout"

It takes a couple or three decades for the mortgage/sprogs to drop down the outgoings list to the point of allowing most IT types the ability to pick up a time burning hobby!

Legacy tech shoots down Ministry of Defence's supply chain improvements

Wellyboot Silver badge
Happy

Re: The Other Side of the System Complexity Mirror

Make it four, how about a year in Fiji...

Wellyboot Silver badge

Boeing eh, Better make sure there's no 'per item' 'per movement' charge involved.

not a joke.

Junior techie had leverage, but didn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Human Nature

They may teach Physics but in most schools you'd be hard pressed to find a physics teacher with more than an A level in any science, STEM teachers starting pay isn't enough to compensate for kneecapping any future non teaching physics based career if you're a recent graduate.

FDA approves AI-powered skin cancer-screening device that's just a teensy bit tricorder-ish

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Ongoing costs

do they also vacuum up all that beautiful PI (very P)?

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Please, Please Make it Stop!

All that is needed is a simple* device that can interface with diagnostic tools that give easy to understand messages like these > Nothing to worry about, Check again in x days/weeks, Consult Doctor soon, Call Doctor now, Call Ambulance with diag code xxxx etc.

Providing the specific diag tools can work the same way as current treatment devices, anything from off the shelf to part of a treatment regime.

Not at all keen on the subscription model either, there are going to be a lot more devices like this popping up in the future.

*As in, it runs the diagnostics built into whatever the connected tool is.

Can solar power be beamed down from space? Yes. Is it commercially viable? Not yet

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Alternative uses

It depends how the technology matures, case example from history.

That trick of yours with the stick and some twine bending it is interesting...but not much use.

FFWD (quite a long time t.b.f.)

"No Harold, don't watch, get under your shield!"

Wellyboot Silver badge
Alert

Re: An alternative

It's the 'unleash unlimited energy' bit that concerns me.

It might just be true..

While we fire the boss, can you lock him out of the network?

Wellyboot Silver badge

Hot backup servers?

A guy who has access to all the files... Does anyone think he 'actually' paid for those servers?

Your pacemaker should be running open source software

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: The CEOs ....

And required to attend certain security conferences that have a practical application leaning?

Daughter of George Carlin horrified someone cloned her dad with AI for hour special

Wellyboot Silver badge

The tech needed to generate this will eventually appear on phones with a simple add half a dozen photos and tell it what you want interface.

We need to fix this before children are ruining their own and each others lives.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Adding physical likeness to the legal definition of plagiarism would go a long way to stopping unauthorized rip offs.

DARPA's air-steered X-65 jet heads into production with goal of flying by 2025

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Formula 1

Lotus with the 88 model decades ago used airflow and a moving body to increase downforce.

Banned because it was a lot faster than every one else (any failure mode would have been bad news for anyone in the ballistic path).

AI flips the script on fingerprint lore – maybe they're not so unique after all

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: Plain sight

It's a good example of the outsider asking 'did you try xxxx?' having not spent years trying to improve the 'it works this way' method.

Wellyboot Silver badge

Will be useful

So basically, having multiple partial prints from different fingers can now be narrowed down to a smaller number of individuals than could be done by previous methods. Matching a know individual to a partial print still requires manual comparison for proof.

I'm not surprised that all my fingers have an underlying similarity at this level, they all derived from the same DNA at the same time.

Pennsylvanians, your government workers are now powered by ChatGPT

Wellyboot Silver badge

Re: No change there, then.

Current technology is still actually answering questions, it needs to evolve to the point where it can reply with a (possibly) related question to truely replace politicos.